high ground, where the riflemen stand. You pay two shillings a shot, and are fined one shilling if you spoil the venison by striking it in the haunch; but if you 'nail' the bull's-eye, which is a circle eight inches in diameter in the deadly region immediately behind the shoulder, you receive a portion of the receipts at the end of the day.

This is the most broken and prettiest part of the common where the Running Deer is placed. Dim and blue in the distance the woods rise on the waving line of the horizon; to the left spring a row of small white targets, that look like visiting-cards stuck in the ground, or the tall white tallies that gardeners use to indicate where they have hidden their seed.

'Rip, rap, ting, tang' go the bullets, and from the hollow below fumes up the blue smoke from the rifles and here and there groups of ladies seem gazing like spectators of some eventful battle.

But here, straight in front of us, is the low, dark earth-mound that we have come to see, down in a hollow, with arching ferns and thorny tufts of furze growing gaily between us and it. The mantelets are high up on those redoubts at either side; and now and then at the back I can see the white shirtsleeves of the markers, who are as busy as if they were working a battery.

We are too far to hear the sound of the iron animal as he rings down the rails and mounts the opposite incline; it is therefore somewhat startling the first time to see the deer emerge from behind the mantelet, with apparently the mechanical and measured gliding motion of a clockwork figure, steal under the shadow of the earth-bank, like the spectral deer that the wild hunter of Fontainebleau has spent so many centuries of midnights pursuing, and slide up the opposite bank into his safe shelter. It seems slow, but it is a flash of slow lightning, and the marksman has no time to reflect, and very little time to aim.

The drummer must be a person of considerable nerve; if he hesitates for a single moment he is lost,'

I once heard a pedantic drum-major say; certainly an undecided, wavering man might shoot a ton of lead away before he hit the Running Deer. You must make up your mind what to do before the deer puts out his nose, and the moment the markers launch him off you must do it. The true time to fire, the best shots tell me, is just at the moment the deer disappears behind the mantelet; he is then going slowly, for he mounts the hill slower, as we might naturally expect, than he goes down it.

There are many of the first-rate Scottish riflemen here who know the live animal, and men who have already carried off the Henry prize, and they strike the creature nearly every time, but not often in the bull'seye. Next year this running target will work smoother; this year the markers have been once slightly wounded by splashes from the bullets, and have often exposed themselves too much in their eagerness to launch the deer with due force.

And now as the firing slackens, and men drop off for early trains and late dinners, the talk at the Running Deer firing-stand turns on the fine shooting of the week-on brave Mr. Pixley, who, by a last bull's-eye, when no other shot would have been sufficient, swooped off his 250l.; of a Mr. Lacey, of the 12th Foot, who made ten bull's-eyes running at 500 yards; and of General Hay, who with five random weapons, made, in twenty-three successive shots at 800 yards, 54 points-mere hits not being enumerated.

The group discussing the question is a characteristic one: the chief speaker is an officer of the line in his blue tunic and dull red sash. He is sitting under the fluttering shadow of the red danger-flag, with one knee up, and his hands clasped across it: his auditors are greycoated or green-coated rifle volunteers of various ranks, some rubbing the powder-bloom and the black, smeary moisture from their riflelocks; others loading or adjusting their sighting.

The gay ensign is lamenting the utter want of sporting feeling in the

120th Light Marines: If you'll believe me,' says he to a sympathizing volunteer tired of shooting, 'if you'll believe me, sir, it is sometimes difficult to get up a game of whist at our mess; they don't dogfight, they don't rat, they don't drive, they don't cricket, they don't do anything-a lot of old fellows, you see, past work; nothing fast, sir, nothing rattling in them; ugh!' and here the ensign groaned in the bitterness of his heart.

But even to rifle-shooting and the thoughtful conversation of ensigns there must be an end, so I take a last look, with the rough wind in my teeth, at the long earth-mounds, the target-like visiting-cards, the rheumatic bell-tents, and hurry off to the station.

In a minute or two the bell rings, the train slides up with its many wheels, and I am borne off by the snorting, fiery monster, far out of range of the Rifle Volunteers.

HERE are stories for books and

TH

stories for pictures. Stories that are charming in the hands of a capable raconteur may, in fact, be anything but charming when told on canvas in perennial colours, though by the most capable painter.

Of this we have an illustration before us. We have all enjoyed the story as told by Le Sage-rather as told by that most light-hearted of demons, Asmodeus, and repeated in airiest manner by the author of 'Le Diable Boiteux'-of the misadventures of that foolish Patricio, citizen of Madrid, who, 'leaving his beautiful and modest young wife at home,' wandered one fine summer morning to the Plazo to look at the preparations for the bull-fights which were to take place that day.

As yet, silly fellow, he is only gazing wistfully at the galleries and the company already beginning to assemble, and thinking how he would like to take part in the festival, did the state of his finances permit. But then step down from one of the scaffolds a couple of lovely, well-dressed young damsels, one of whom in descending shows by accident a neatly-turned ankle, with a pink silk stocking and silver garter,' and instantly 'his heart is all in a flame.' Evidently the ladies are at a loss, and our citizen of course proffers his services. They are becomingly coy, but at length confess that they left home so early in order to secure good places that

VOL. II.-NO. VIII.

they did not stay for breakfast, and now they are seeking for a house where young ladies without their brother may with propriety take a light morning meal. Perhaps he could direct them to such a house? Poor Patricio is of course only too happy to conduct them. He finds a neat suburban hostel. Mine host luckily has the remains of a great entertainment made only yesterday." And whilst the fair ones eat (or whilst his back is turned, conceal in a linen pocket which one of them has under her petticoat) not only a brace of young partridges and two cold chickens, with a proportionate quantity of wine, but find they further need three more pigeons and a good slice of Estremadura ham, with a dessert of fruits proper to the season, our foolish citizen amuses himself with contemplating the beauty of his Luisitas. He is a

little dismayed at the bill, which amounts to fifty reals, for he has but thirty reals in his pocket, and to make up the difference he can think of no other means than that of pledging his rosary, garnished with silver coins. But he soon rallies, duly deposits his beads in the hands of the landlord, and, being graciously permitted to escort his charmer, obtains on credit from an acquaintance of his some excellent seats for the show; borrows from another friend a doubloon, that he may obtain ices, dried sweetmeats, and other afternoon delicacies; and, when the fes

S

tival is over, like a gallant cavalier sees the ladies to the door of their house, being not permitted to enter, because the brother is a choleric young gentleman, and might take offence, till a signal is given from the window; and then, in fine, sits on a stone hard by, cooling his heels, hour after hour, till the bells chime midnight, and he finds that the doorway of the house is merely the doorway of an alley which leads to another street, and that, in short, he has been imposed upon. And so he has nothing for it but to sneak home to his dear Mrs. P., who has a somewhat sharp tongue, and who is administering a Caudleian discourse as Asmodeus so conveniently raises the roof of the chamber for Don Cleofas's delectation.

Now nothing can be more amusing than the story as Le Sage relates it; but though Mr. Egg has seized the only conceivable moment fairly presentable upon canvas (unless it be that of the poor dupe cooling his heels outside the house he takes to be Luisita's), and has done his part as well, perhaps, as any living painter could have done it, his very success only makes us feel the more that the subject is not one-with all its associations-for a drawing-room picture.

But having made his selection, the painter has treated the subject in his daintiest manner. The picture has the quiet, but cheerful sunny colour you look for in a picture of this sort. The lover is deliberatively soft-so won over by the pretty face and pink silk stocking, that he is only momentarily taken aback at the unexpected total at the bottom of the bill. Mine host is a genuine Spanish landlord of the established type. And the young ladies are--if the truth must be told-almost pretty and modest-looking enough to have deceived a wiser man than Don Patricio, the suspicious display of

the pink stocking notwithstanding.

And this consideration reconciles us to our artist, with whom-though perhaps we ought not to say sowe were hardly disposed to agree as to the selection he made on this occasion from his note-book. 'Certainly,' we were inclined to expostulate, you have given us a couple of very pretty faces, and they are taken from what is undoubtedly a choice little picture in its way. But are they "la crême de la crême" even of Mr. Egg's fair faces? Have you forgotten that most likeable lady, Bianca, in his version of the 'Taming of the Shrew?" Or if, as a set-off to the worthier countenances you have given us before, you wished for a frail beauty from one of Mr. Egg's canvases, why not choose "Pretty Nelly," whom old Pepys, for all his wife's grim looks and his own pious resolutions, found it impossible to keep from kissing?'

But we perceive now that the mistake lies with us-and with the painter. He has chosen a maladroit theme, and he has not made his fair ones correspond to their true character. Look well at these pretty brunettes, and say whether they could possibly have swallowed that inordinate quantity of partridges and pigeons and Estremadura ham, with bread, wine, and fruits, all at one sitting, and then have been ready for ices, and dried fruits, and chocolate, and lemonade, almost directly afterwards? Or that Jacintha -the damsel on the left, with that quaint head-ornament-could possibly have stuffed away a brace of partridges and a couple of pigeons in a linen pocket she kept under her petticoat for the purpose of pilfer? Or that this Luisita could have been capable of showing a pink silk stocking and silver garter in order to lead a foolish Madrid citizen such a dance?